Alexander Simon Wolcott was a maker of medical supplies. He was a nineteenth-century pioneer photographer and inventor. He made with John Johnson the world's first commercial photography portrait studio and patented the first US camera that made photographs.
Wolcott lived in New York City in the 1830s and made dental supplies for a living. He worked in the mechanics of designing instruments that used optics. In 1839 he became an associated with Johnson, a jeweler and watchmaker's assistant. Johnson took to Wolcott on October 6, 1839, a copy of the specifications on Daguerre's method of capturing a likeness of a person and storing on a permanent plate that would hold the picture indefinitely. They made a camera that day based on Daguerre's method and started experimenting with it. Wolcott improved on Daguerre's lens camera by making a camera that used a mirror instead. On October 7, 1839, Wolcott made the first portrait in the world with a prototype of his daguerreotype camera when he took a picture of his partner Johnson. Wolcott patented it on May 8, 1840. It became known as "Wolcott's camera" and referred to as the "mirror camera." It was the first US patent in photography. Wolcott and Johnson started using their camera on March 4, 1840, in a New York City business on Broadway called the "Daguerreian Parlor" that made commercial portraits in a studio. It was in the Granite Building. They had opened the world's first commercial daguerreotype gallery, a portrait photography studio. By June they had a branch studio in Washington D.C., which was operated by John G. Stevenson. Wolcott's patented camera used a polished concave mirror to reflect the focused light onto a photosensitive plate that was less than a half inch square. The pictures were not a negative image of reverse colors, but a correct positive image that did not require reversion of the image. The size of the photo-sensitive plate was eventually increased to just over two square inches that they could make a likeness image, because of their refined mechanical lighting techniques. Wolcott and Johnson continued to improve their photography techniques as time went on. Wolcott improved his photo-sensitive plate and came up with a chemical "accelerator" that was a mix of bromide and chloride. This along with improved polished silver plates earned them a second U.S. patent in photography in December 1841, designated #2,391. They also came up with new innovative studio lighting by designing special outdoor mirrors that provided more light to the inside studio itself for faster better quality portrait pictures.
